Reeling in a Win: Birmingham Baron Tyler Saladino is fishing for the big league.

Tyler Saladino hasn ’t really had a lot of time to explore Birmingham. The 22-year-old shortstop joined the Birmingham Barons’ roster in April, and since then, he’s spent most of his time on the field at Regions Park.

“We kind of just go to the field, practice, play the game, come home, get a good night’s sleep, wake up, try and feed yourself something good in the morning to get your day going, and then do it all over again,” he says.

Such is the life of a minor league baseball player, working his way up the ranks to someday join the big leagues.

Saladino grew up in San Diego and played for Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., before being drafted by the Chicago White Sox in 2010. He’s played in the White Sox organization for the Bristol White Sox in Virginia, the Kannapolis Intimidators and Winston-Salem Dash in North Carolina, and now the Barons.

“You just go wherever they tell you to go,” Saladino says. “If you can move up, that’s always a good thing. Ultimately, you’re trying to reach the major leagues.”

Once the roster was set for the season, Saladino headed to Birmingham and found a Hoover apartment he shares with four teammates. “Some people rent houses, but usually everyone branches off to different apartment complexes,” Saladino says.

For a young player trying to reach the majors,there’s not much that Saladino does that isn’t oriented toward that goal. It’s baseball, baseball, baseball — most of the time.

“We have a few days off occasionally, and we’ll go fish when we can,” he says. “We’ll go over to Lake Purdy, grab a boat and go fishing for a little bit. I’m a big fisherman, so every chance I can, I try to get out on the water, spend some time out there and get away from baseball a little bit.”

Well, not entirely. Two of his fishing buddies are teammates Drew Garcia and Seth Loman. “We all spent some time fishing during spring training out in Arizona, and we've kept up with it, trying to find some good spots around here,” he says.

If there’s life after baseball for Saladino, it’s fishing.

“This is something I’ve always done, and I always will do,” he says. “I would wake up in the morning and go, if I had a boat I could take out.” Off the field, Saladino also has some musical inclinations, much to the chagrin of his fellow Barons, he says.

“I’m trying to learn the guitar a little bit, but it’s a slow process,” he says

Instead, he’s playing the ukulele, a nod to his grandparents, who are from Hawaii.

“I travel with it sometimes and bug my teammates on the bus,” says Saladino, who plays Jack Johnson tunes and some Hawaiian-style songs on the instrument.

At night, Saladino will try to catch ESPN’s “SportsCenter” to catch up on, you guessed it, baseball.

“I’m not a big basketball or football guy,” he says. “I kind of just enjoy baseball, and that pretty much consumes everything. The off-season is the same thing, just a little more freedom to fish. You still have to work out and stay in shape, probably more than during the season. You’re not playing every day, so you’re not getting that consistent exercise.”

Just par for the course for a minor league player trying to advance, Saladino says.